AN EXPOSITION

OF THE

FIRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF JOHN

IN A SERIES OF SERMONS.

SERMON VIII.

1 JOHN 1: 8

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not
in us.1 John 1: 8.

The apostle having delivered himself, most gloriously on the former subjects, is disposed to pursue a subject most closely connected with them. To acquit the conscience from all sin and guilt on gospel grounds, and thereby to raise up the mind of a real believer to such apprehensions of the virtue and efficacy of the blood of Christ, as to encourage the saint to hold communion with the Father, in the clear and full apprehension that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth him from all sin, this is most noble and divine. Even in the very ministerial end and design of the same. Yet the apostle, being in his own mind vastly comprehensive, lest there should be any mistake on the great subject he has been deliver­ing, enters on a new one : which concerns believers, himself, and all who profess to have communion with the .Father, and the Son, and who believe this most precious and fundamental truth of the everlasting gospel-that they are pure and clean from all sin in the blood of the Lamb. Whilst this is as true as God is true : and it is by the belief of this, they can approach their heavenly Father, and enjoy fellowship with Him, notwithstanding all their infirmities, and all they feel, and are the subjects of: yet he would not have then to conceive, the blood of Christ cleanseth their unholy nature, and makes it pure from sin: or makes their sin purity. No. Whilst they were clean from all sin in the blood of Christ, and had liberty and boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus : they having their hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and their bodies washed with pure water : yet the inbeing of sin existed in their fallen nature : yea, it was that very nature : in it dwelt no good thing. Therefore, not to call back the truth which he had delivered unto them, which was an essential truth of the gospel, and as true as God is true, and in the knowledge and belief of which they alone could have victory and triumph over sin; yet he would they should clearly understand, and distinguish, between what they were inherently in, and of themselves, and what they were in Christ; and not so blend the subject, as to conceive because they were pure from all sin in Christ, they were without all sin in their natures. This was so far from being the truth, that he says, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive our­selves, and the truth is not in us.

 With a design to open and explicate these words, I will set before you the following particulars.

 1. Shew the speaker, and of whom, and to whom he speaks. It is the apostle is the speaker. He includes himself, and the rest of the apostles in what. he here expresses. Those who are spoken to, are such as had fellowship with the Holy Trinity : to whom he said, " if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleansed, us from all sin."

 2. What, he here saith unto then, concerns the inbeing of sin. He asserts it is in them. If we say that we have no sin in us, we do not say true.

 3. It is self-deception, and such are mistaken ones, who say they are sinless in themselves. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

 4. The Truth of God is not maintained by those who say, there is no sin in them: it being contrary to the scripture to experiences, and confession of all saints; who have all been of one heart and one soul in the acknowledgment of this. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Having given you the plan, I proceed to fill it up, as time Lord may most graciously be pleased to assist me in the same. I am

 1. To shew the speaker, and of whom, and to whom he speaks. It is the apostle. He includes himself, and the rest of the apostles, in what he here expresses. Those who are spoken to, are such as had fellowship with the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ : to whom he had said, " If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

The speaker is the apostle John himself. One who was an high favorite with our Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks here in his own name, and also for all the rest of the apostles, as he had in all the former verses. He uses as he before had done, the term we. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. He speaks to saints. Those he speaks unto are such as had fellowship with the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ. These had fellowship also with the apostles, in all the blessings of the everlasting gospel ; which contains a fullness of blessings. He here writes to those, to whom he had said, " If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." And here in the words before us, he says to these very same persons, If we say, If I myself say, If any of you say, that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if it be so, how are we to understand the former assertion, concerning the cleansing virtue and efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Our apostle had affirmed, the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin. And here he says, If' we sat that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. How do both those assertions agree together, that is the present question? To which the reply is-The blood of Christ is our everlasting purity in the sight of God. In it we are cleansed body and soul from every spot and stain of sin. Our purity cannot be fully conceived by us: we are without all sin in the eye of God's justice : He having transferred all our sins from us and laid them all on Christ ; who was sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Yet. this hath not removed the inherency of sin out of us : our old nature remains in us. The blood of Christ hath no influence on it. We are in our nature-selves what we ever were, and so we shall ever remain ; so long as we are in the body, we shall have sin in us. It may be the following observation may reflect light on our minds. Our Lord Jesus Christ had once, all our sins on Him. He Was made sin : yet there was no sin in Him : yet all the sins of the whole election of grace were laid on Him. So we, to whom his righteousness, blood and sacrifice are imputed, are discharged from the imputation of all our sins thereby : and are in the sight of God, perfectly holy, righteous, and pure from all sin, by virtue of the imputation expressed. Yet we are not. freed from the inbeing of sill hereby ; any more than our great Surety, Christ Jesus, was defiled with the inherency of Sin, by the real imputation of sin to his Person. I conceive this rightly considered is a proper reply to the question, con­cerning the apostles assertions. As Ist. How the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin : and 2nd. How this assertion is agreeable with truth, anal by no means contradicts the former. This the apostle John declares was his own case. It was alike true of all the apostles. It was so with those very persons included in the us, who had fellowship with the apostles, and with the Father and tine Son, and whom the blood of Christ had purified, and who enjoyed the benefit. and sense of the virtue of the same in their own sorts-that they were notwithstanding all this the subjects of sin. They had it inherently in theta. To deny this was to prove themselves liars. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. This brings me

2. To observe that what the apostle here saith unto them, concerns the inbeing of sin. He asserts it is in them. If we say that we have no sill in us, we do not say the truth.

We are all one in the first Adam, and have derived from him, the whole inherency of sin, which is the total corruption of our whole nature. This we received in our natural birth, and we leave the whole of it existing in us. It is a very notifying consideration, and should at all times bundle us, before the Lord ; we being in our nature-selves always one and the same as it respects our fallen nature. The assertion of the apostle, no doubt, hath a very deep and good design in it : surely it fully clears up this to our minds, that we are to look without us, for our present and everlasting purity from all sin before the Lord. That it is not in us : nor even in the new creation and workmanship which the Holy Ghost hath wrought within. Not that there is any impurity in the same. No. There is no sin in the new creature. Yet we are to look for purification from all sin to the blood of Christ : and we need always to be looking there, and to be continually receiving this truth into our minds, that. the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanseth us from all sin, because sin is always in us. Nor can we get above the influences and defects of the same, but as our spiritual minds are engaged in real fellowship with God, and in the true apprehensions of what is contained in this most precious, and everlasting efficacious remedy. It would be of no advantage to know our sinfulness, if we were not at the same time, directed to the healer. Nor could we be borne up under our inherent sinfulness, without some blessed views of what we are in Christ, and of our being everlastingly complete in Him. It is the, knowledge of the one, is the only mean of carrying off from the other. We may also well conceive, the apostle foresaw what false conceptions might arise in the minds of some, in that, and after ages, concerning perfection in the flesh. This might, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, be a motive with him, for saying, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And most especially it might be with this end and design delivered, that the saints might not thick their own cases such as none but themselves had the experience of. No, says the apostle, it is not. I myself, who was so blessedly and personally acquainted with our Lord Jesus Christ, and all we the rest of the apostles, have sin in us : so that here, you and we are the same : we are but sinners saved by free grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and you are just the same. If sin be in us, we have noticing inherent to boast of: we have then all evil in us : then we are what the apostle Paul speaks of himself, " I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing." There is nothing but evil in our fallen nature. No. Nor will there ever be. Our apostle, as such, declares and positively asserts the inbeing of sin, in saints: in such as had fellowship with the Father, and with his Son. Of' these, whom the blood of Christ cleanseth from. all sin, he positively asserts, sin was in them. He does not say they were under sin : he does not say, sin reigned in them, and over them neither does he say, sin had the dominion over them. He could not say this of the saints of the most high God. Sin is in them, but it doth not reign and domineer over them : yet it often threatens so to do: but it is incompatible with the state, the saints are brought into by regeneration that it should thus prevail. As we have sin within us, it cannot but follow, we must more, or less, have the evidence of the same in our own experience. Therefore to deny this truth is to be guilty of a lie. It would have been so in the mouths of the apostles : it would have been so in the saints our apostle here writes unto : it would be so in us : and in all others. The words are an Apostolical assertion ; which will be found true in all ages, and throughout all generations. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. It is well for us therefore to acknowledge this to be the truth : to be humbled for it: to carry about a sense of it within us : so as to feel our continual need of looking off it continually to Jesus the Rock of our Salvation. We should make this use of it-To renounce ourselves, wholly, and entirely-To be making continual use of Christ, in all our communion with the Father, in Him, the glorious Mediator-To maintain this truth in our renewed minds, that the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanseth us from all sin. That as sin hath its present and moment existence in us, and we are never without it, No, not in our highest acts and outgoings of our souls, in holy fellowship with the Lord : so neither is there a moment, in which there is not the present virtue and worth of the blood and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, put forth for us, and on our behalf. It is always present with, and before the Lord, to cleanse us in his sight, and before Him, as sin is inherent in us, and consequently present with us. I view this as what follows on the apostle's assertion, and as containing the improvement of the same. I would therefore proceed to my next particular which is

 3. To shew, that to say we have no sin, is self-deception ; and that such, and all such as say, they have no sin in them, are mistaken ones. They are self-deceived. They are self-deluded. They are liars. The truth of God is not in them. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

 How can it be otherwise, seeing all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ? If we all sinned in Adam, and received our natures from him, we being in his loins by creation, as we proceed from our immediate parents by generation, how could it be, but we must in our very conception and birth, be the subjects of, and derive the whole contained in sin into our persons, as his descendants ? It is expressly said of Adam, " That he lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image ; and called his name Seth." Gen. v. 3. . He could beget in no other image than his own. It was his sinful image he only could communicate and beget in the likeness of. For "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? Not one." It is wholly and everlastingly impossible: therefore it is not to be expected. This being the case, there cannot be the true knowledge and experience of it in the mind, and that which is contradictory to all this be expressed ; for none of all the sons of men, be they saints, professors, or sinners of any sort or kind, can say personally, or individually, '' I have made my heart clean, I any pure from my sin." No. They cannot. So that if any arc so bold, and fool-hardy as thus to express themselves, let them be saints of the vary highest attainments, and which may shine forth as stars of the first magnitude, they are liars. They neither know the truth of God ; nor do they abide therein : nor are they acquainted with their own hearts : nor with what is passing continually in, and within them­selves. If they did, it would be more likely they would cry out, '' Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults." No one that knows himself to be a sinner, but must be a self-deluded person to conceive himself to be without sin. he must be evidently so, who dares say openly, and declare it to others, that he is a sinless per­son, and that there is no sin in him : it matters not who he is, or what he is, either in his own eyes, or that of others ; or what his walk and conversation may be, but he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. This is declared by our apostle in our text. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. The words are so expressly declared, we cannot mistake them ; hence it must be positively a willful lie : it must be self-delusion : it must be self-deception. We are charge­able with this, whoever we are, who dare affirm we are inherently without sin. Nay this is not all : we are charged here by the apostle, with giving the lie to the Holy Ghost, who here declares we are not without the inhe­rency of it. It seems almost incredible any under any sort of a profession of Christ, should hold and maintain sinless perfection in themselves, seeing every man living is altogether vanity. And even the best of men, those who are real saints, it is said of them, and it belongs to them, such a declaration as this, "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness and glory of man, as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away." That it should be so-to maintain such erroneous notion, is a manifest. proof of the self-righteousness of the mind ; or how otherwise can it be accounted for?-that a mind of itself, naturally sinful the whole essence of which is sin, should be sinless? Why it is a con­tradiction in terms. Indeed, Sirs, it is. Yet it even starts up in the minds of real saints at times : and it appears it does so, by their aiming to strive, and seek for that in themselves, from which they may draw their evidence of their being in Christ, instead of receiving Christ into their minds from the word of the gospel, and the revelation and testimony which God hath given therein concerning his Son. This is also another proof of the self-righteousness of the heart ; the propensity of looking for evidences of grace and holiness in ourselves short of and separate from Christ : whereas, none of them are to be so found there. Whilst this does not amount to saying, we have no sin in us, yet it is from hence it origi­nates. All those who ever were so bold as to declare this, it originated from the self-delusion of their own minds. Those who in these latter days, I mean since the apostles' times, have dared to give the lie to the Holy Ghost, who here says, by the apostle, in the name of the whole church of Christ, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth, is not in us ; have been found amongst the Papists, Mystics, Quakers, and Wesleyans. It is not worth my time to take notice of them : many of whom their lives have proved them most detest­able sinners : some of them having been guilty of the most monstrous sins, and sinning. And what hath the very design of the devil himself been, in setting these on making any such a profession, so contrary to truth, and in direct opposition to the Holy Ghost? I reply, to set aside Christ, and to prove that men may be holy and good without Him - that it is all mistake that we need Christ as the scriptures say we do : or the Holy Spirit either-we can be holy without him-it is only for us to attend to such and such workings in our own minds, and by our own thoughts, workings, and exertions, we shall be inwardly holy; yea, far beyond what the gospel treats of. This is Satan's delusion : with which I may be bold to say, he has corrupted the minds of many under the pro­fession of what is styled Christianity. And all to depreciate Christ, and to lead of wholly and entirely from Him : whilst he allows those to have the sound of Christ, and the Spirit, of Christ in their mouths, and even to attribute great things to Him, and his Spirit, he at the same time, corrupts the mind, so as there is a secret and an entire renunciation of Christ, under all their confessions of Him, and the Holy Ghost. Some of these self-deceivers, and self-deluded ones, the Devil hath so inwardly wrought upon, as that they have seen visions, been filled with raptures, and so transported with ecstasies, as have had the appearance of the marvelous in them, and been taken for such. And all this the more effectually to deceive these self-righteous ones : all of whom have fancied themselves to be pure ones : holy ones : pure ones in their own nature sinless ones. All which hath arisen from the self-righteousness of their own minds; wrought upon, stirred up, and drawn forth into act and exercise, by the devil; who turns himself into the appearance of an angel of light to suit them the better ; and act the more powerfully and effect­ually within them, and upon them. It. would be well for believers in Christ Jesus, never to be taken with accounts from any, and every quarter, given of the holiness, purity, walk, and conversation of any, who are not savingly acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. No. Nor with what may be recorded of such as these, any further than it is evidenced they walked as saved sinners, with the Lord, in an entire dependence on Him alone, to keep them from the evil of their own hearts, and from the sin which most easily beset them. In the true account of such, we shall have the grace of Christ realized in them, and towards them. Yet we shall not have persons without sin : but we shall have sin in them : and who needed Christ every moment, and for every thing; and who without Christ could do nothing. I proceed to my next and last particular.

 4. To shew the Truth of God is not maintained by those, who say, there is no sin in them. It being contrary to the scriptures : to experience : and also to the confession of all saints recorded in the word : who have all been of one heart, and one soul, in the acknowledgment of this truth-that they were the subjects of sin. Then sin must be in them, or they could not be the subjects of it, so as to be inwardly defiled with it, and afflicted by it. Here then comes in our text, with all its weight and authority, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

 If our asserting, we have no sin in us, is not to be supported by the holy scriptures of truth, then we do wrong to maintain an assertion which is not agreeable with them. Now that there is no part thereof, in which can be found, or by which it can be made to appear, sin is not in the saints of the Most High God, then to assert the contrary, must be to sin against, them : it must be to deny the authority of them : consequently it must be, yea it is to sin against them-to assert that we are without sin, seeing they all declare and testify we are not. Not one saint is mentioned in them, but was a sinner. Noah, Job, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and all the saints had sin in them ; or how came they to sin ? I need not instance their parti­cular acts of sinning : yet this I would observe, as their sins are not recorded for us to practice the same : so neither are they for us to insult their characters. Which I conceive is done, when we too much expose them, and beyond the truth also. I look on it as well spoken by one, who says, Noah is no where called a drunkard, nor Lot an incestuous person, nor David an adulterer, nor Solomon an idolater. And why are they not? It is not because they were not guilty of these sins: but it is because these were transient acts. They were not what they lived in and pursued. They only fell into them. And soon eluctuated out of them. Yet they could not have fallen by them, though but transiently, had it not been for the inherency of sin within them. Noah is called an Elder, and mentioned in the catalogue of believers, and Lot is styled just Lot, in the New Testament, and no notice taken of the sins they fell into. So are David and Solomon, without the least stigma on their persons. Should it not teach us to speak with reverence of those who are gone to heaven before us? I think so. It is expressly said in the scripture, " There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not." Eccl. vii. 20. By a just man, is here meant, a justified man. One made righteous in the righteousness of Christ. imputed unto Him, and that by the Lord himself. So it is just equivalent to the words of the apostle before us- That such as were cleansed in the blood of Christ from all sin, and had fellowship with the Father and the Son, yet. they had sin in them, and would tell a willful lie if they were to have said otherwise. We have Abraham falling into the same sin, again and again ; in the denial of his wife. He confesses himself before the Lord to be but dust and ashes. Job a saint high in God's estimation, of whom he is pleased to make his boast : yet he falls down before the majesty of Jehovah, and cries out., Behold I am vile he saw and felt himself to be so, or he had not spoken the truth. What made him vile ? the indwelling of sin in his nature. Isaiah cried out, of and concerning himself, Woe is me! for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. This had not been if he had been without sin. The apostle James tells us, even that great prophet Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are. No perfect character in the word of God, no not amongst all the saints. Some of them fell by sin : others cry out by reason of their inherent pollution : some confess their exceeding sinful­ness before the Lord. And so it is with saints in the New Testament. also. None could ever express the heartfelt bitterness of indwelling sin, more than holy Paul cloth in the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans. So that it is contrary to scripture, to experience, to what is recorded of real saints in the Bible, yea of the greatest of them, even of Moses and Aaron the saints of the Lord, to say any of them were without sin. Our text therefore is by all this confirmed to contain a most unquestionable truth in it. Which is this, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. We must act con­trary to our feelings, when we so think, or say. It cannot be that we exercise our judgment, or speak agreeably to what we are the subjects of, if we at any time say, we are free from the inherency of sin. Were we so-to do, it is to contradict all recorded of the saints under the past, and present dispensation of grace : it is to discountenance all recited of their experiences in the written word. It is to sin against God's own testimony concerning this : which is absolutely to give the lie to the Holy Spirit. We deceive ourselves in so conceiving. It is to contradict matter of' fact. "The just, man falleth seven times a day, and riseth again." It is not our being kept. from outward acts of sin, nor our being preserved froth a course of sinning,, frees us from being the subjects of sin. So that our being kept. near the Lord, favoured with his most gracious presence, admitted into free, open, blessed fellowship with Him, and his Son Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanseth us from all sin, this does not give us, at. any time warrant to say, we are without sin in us for the whole body of sin is in us, let our sense, feelings, and perceptions of it be as they may. I will acknowledge there are seasons, in which believers are so favoured in actual fellowship with God, and with such believing views of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they are so swallowed up, as to forget the whole of sin, and to have no apprehensions of the same yet this does not expel sin out of them. So in the very article of Death it is the case of many saints to be so swallowed up in God, and Christ, as to forget. themselves for evermore. Even let it be thus, yet it does not eradicate sin. Nothing but the actual separating stroke, which rends asunder the union of the soul and body, will ever free us from the in­dwelling of sin. It is well for us to know and rightly apprehend these truths from the word of God to be taught all which appertains to the same, from the word, and by the Spirit-to be settled in the clear under­standing thereof; as hereby we are enabled to walk in the belief of the same: we are also hereby preserved front many, very many mistakes.

 It world he well here, if real saints did not attend too much one to the other, concerning these points, but be more concerned to know, how these subjects are stated by the Spirit of the living God in the written word. That should be our directory. We here should never lean to our own understandings : these are matters of too great importance. To the law, and to the testimony we should repair. We are all prone to self-deception : we should therefore give up our own judgments to the word of God, to be guided and influenced by the same. To have true scriptural views of sin, of the inbeing of sin in us, is of vast importance. To be delivered and discharged from the whole, in God's way, as stated in the everlasting gospel, and set forth therein, for our present benefit, and salvation, is of the uttermost importance to our minds. To know this by the inward teachings of the Holy Ghost, this only renders it effectual unto us : and by it we are saved from sinful guilty fears, and from innumerable errors. May the Lord the Holy Ghost bless what is here set before you, if he please. Amen.